Political Development of High School Seniors in 10 U.S. States, 2006-2007

A panel study of high school seniors in five red and five blue states interviewed before and after the 2006 midterm elections, with a subset measured again in 2007. Survey questions assessed political opinions, knowledge, and participation, while aggregate data on candidate news releases and political advertisements were also collected. The dataset was created by Michael A. McDevitt at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Use Cases

• Analyzing changes in political knowledge and participation based on survey responses across three time points.
• Modeling the influence of state-level sociopolitical culture on adolescent political development.
• Investigating cross-level interactions between individual demographics and contextual media coverage data.
• Studying the effects of the 2006 midterm elections on the political opinions of older adolescents.

Strengths

• Panel design with measurements before and after a major political event (2006 midterm elections) and a follow-up in 2007.
• Includes individual-level survey data and aggregate contextual data on media coverage.
• Sample drawn from 10 states selected for variance in regional influence, sociopolitical culture, and size.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

University of Colorado Boulder

Collection Method

Survey and content analysis

Time Range

2006-2007

Geography

10 U.S. states (five red, five blue)